Spiritual Formation

And The Integration of Faith and Vocation

Part I
In the early 1990's, as a Student Minister, I would often take my Student's to a Young Life camp up in the state of New York. In order to save a day's traveling, we would all board a charter bus at 11:00 p.m. and drive the entire night (the thought being that everyone would be sleeping!) and arrive about 10:00 a.m. in the morning good-to-go for our next eight-day camping experience.
One particular event I recall vividly, during one of these adventures, was waking up in the deep dark hours of the morning and needing desperately to use the "facility." Sitting in the very front seat, I stood up and groggily noted through the semi-darkness a veritable wasteland of sleeping human bodies, grotesquely arranged across the aisle, seats and even the overhead luggage racks. Swaying precariously while I picked my way carefully to the restroom in the back, I noted four or five students who were still awake and playing cards right across the aisle from the bathroom. We all took a brief moment to stare at each other for a moment without saying any words, and then I opened the door and disappeared inside.
Upon completing my essential task, I made my way to the door only to discover that I could not open it! Immediately it came to mind that the students just outside the door must have barricaded themselves against it. Confident in my physical size and strength, I determined to push them away from the door by placing right foot against the toilet and my left foot against the opposite wall. Bracing my shoulders against the door and turning the knob at the same time, pushed against the door with all of my might. Sweat beaded itself on my forehead and my legs shook violently, but try as I might I could not budge the door. I stopped suddenly when it occurred to me that the loud punctuating grunts and groans emanating from the restroom, from all of my exertions would have made great laughing fodder for my adversaries outside the door. Nonplussed, I devised another plan of escape. Crossing to the other side of the room (I use this phrase very generously), ran at the door full-force like an enraged bull hoping to jar them loose and hopefully get a foothold and force my way out. Again, my efforts netted me only a loud fruitless thump; a nanosecond of brilliant stars and a sore shoulder that bounced me back to where I started. Becoming concerned, I craftily resorted to one final cannot-fail-plan: I placed my face near the door crack and begged to be let out – promising everything but my first-born son. Regrettably, like all my other preceding efforts no results!
Backing up from the door, I began to pace around attempting to devise some other plan that would render my escape from the gross confines in which I had been trapped for over twenty minutes. "Wait!" I said to myself. "Ohhhh…" Trembling with hope and anticipation, I turned the knob of the door hopefully. Pulling it INWARD the door opened up silently… The students that I thought had trapped me in the restroom were across the aisle were sleeping. Twenty minutes in that place when I only needed to be there for two – just because I lost perspective on which way the door moved!!! Flushed with humiliation, I made my way back to the front of the bus resolute that I would NEVER let anyone know what had happened!

The Moral of the Story:

Admittedly, I often get trapped spiritually speaking in the restroom of life. I get stuck because my lack of vision and perspective keeps me there and nothing else. I find this lost perspective leaves me with a bored, complacent and uninspired Christian life. I am convinced in the field of Youth Ministry, or even Spiritual Formation, much of it has to do with my lack of practicing a comprehensive sense of intentionally -- the integrating of a vibrant faith into my vocation. I know also that I am not alone in the struggle to integrate faith and vocation.

My Personal Responsibility

How easy it is to settle into the predictable machinations and responsibilities of my office without ever really insisting on energizing and perfecting my particular vocation as Christ would have it be. I know that I should never be free of the need to model to my students the very same things that I am calling and challenging them with as well. I should want my teaching and praxis of Student Ministry and Spiritual formation to be evident in my life still, even as I, at the same time, demand that it be evident in their life as well. In secret moments of hidden honestly, I ask myself: "What compelling evidence do I have in my own life that gives me the credibility to make the demands that I make on how they should be and act personally and professionally?" Can I say to them with integrity: "You can do this!" Because I have actually seen or done or am doing it myself?
My mind and heart are often needled with the disturbing thought that my constant challenge to students to include their faith in their vocation, (in ways that are substantive and meaningful) must first of all begin with the personal witness and observable evidence in my own life. Again and again, those sanctifying questions from the Holy Spirit: "Have I - am I - taking similar kind's risks, making similar kinds of sacrifices that I am asking them to make?" Have I instead contented myself to fall back on the practice that it's ok to, quote, instruct and present only theoretical material based on what some "expert" wrote, who happened to read what someone else wrote, who in turn read about still someone else – generations removed from real life experience?
I cringe inwardly when I recognize that I have not honored teachable spirits by making sure my anecdotes fresh? I become troubled when my selected personal stories related to the material that I am teaching, might not be authentic and compelling? I feel frustrated when I run short of illustrations, honed by real life experiences that have the ability to motivate and inspire. Is there any good reason why I should give up being committed as a scholar-practitioner (participator)?
At the root of it all, I believe that God calls me to use my gifts and to live life on the edge as a divine, sometimes wild, adventure; yet inwardly haunts the subtle but terrible fear, that I faithfully practice that all-too-true old and unpleasant adage: "Those who can't do teach."
In my more honest and reflective times, I find a literary figure like Gandalf - that enigmatic character from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - fascinating. Like him I want to always be out THERE, - in the world… mixing it up…. I want to always truly be aware of the danger that is before us and ACTING in a manner that demands the full use of my calling (vocation) and gifts, combating whatever evil the Lord has prepared in advance for me to engage. I want vocationally, with godly love, if circumstances demand it, to be able to stand courageously before the demonic Balrogs of this age, and declare with resolute passion "you shall not pass!" because I belong to a higher order. But this will be impossible with my faith and vocation if I am constantly hanging out within the dim, narrow, polluted and unimaginative confines of a restroom. Balrogs don't seem to have established their domicile in restrooms and for obvious reasons – nobody lives there.
Living in the restrooms of life results in my having very little credibility because the nature and quality of my life will speak more loudly than any amount of countervailing words that I have to give them. With muffled voice, from a cramped contaminated room, through the crack of a closed door, I will attempt to give them material, that from every appearance, seems to have a dubious and uninspiring origin. The most powerful thing that I will really communicate is: "live as I live, but not as I say…." The greatest teacher of all time, in a conversation with a young, affluent aristocrat, was noted for saying: "Come, follow me…"